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I breed rats for my snakes, as far as I know as long as you kill them humanely first there should be no problem... letting your dog kill them is not humane! You would have to research to find out the most humane way of killing a rabbit - we gas our rats. I'm sure it will be the same as growing your own meat animals for human consumption and plenty of people breed their own chickens, pigs, etc.

You could talk to a butcher and see what they can get in for you as well. They probably have access to them but without the demand they won't bother having them in store.

From a reptile enthusiastic point of view, taking wild mice/rats/rabbits or whatever from the wild to start a breeding colony is a big no no. You have no clue what kind of diseases or problems the animal might have. Kind of like finding a dog on the street and starting a breeding program with it, except in this case it's for food consumption.

Overall it's far better to source animals from actual breeders (and thus, are domesticated) and not from the wild.

I breed rats for my snakes, as far as I know as long as you kill them humanely first there should be no problem... letting your dog kill them is not humane! You would have to research to find out the most humane way of killing a rabbit - we gas our rats. I'm sure it will be the same as growing your own meat animals for human consumption and plenty of people breed their own chickens, pigs, etc.

You could talk to a butcher and see what they can get in for you as well. They probably have access to them but without the demand they won't bother having them in store.

I used to work in a butcher shop and to buy rabbit is really expensive. We used to charge around $18 per rabbit. It was a waste of money in my opinion. The only people that ever brought them was medievel re-enactors.

Mmm I think I'm going to cause trouble ere.. My OH shots wild rabbits for Boss. OH skins them and gets the bullet out if it hasn't gone straight thru.
Maybe they should cull some of the wild rabbits for dog food like they do with roos.

I have information on CSIRO website on meat farming rabbits, I still haven't found any actual applicable written laws though.

There is a lady in the UK that breeds rabbit for meat, she pops them in the back of the neck with a pellet gun, how would that be painwise compared to the gassing?

I was only joking about the popping it in the backyard, I have a weird sense of humour, so I apologise for that.

The other ways most people seem to do it is turning them upside down and whacking them over the head (I don't think I could do that though) and one other way I have forgotten about at the moment.

I have seen some of the appalling conditions for commercial farmed rabbit places in Aus, at least ours would be brought up with love.

I can understand the domestication vs wild rearing thoughts though, but how would I go on getting wild rabbits to breed? Also the chances of disease from the wipeouts then increase dramatically.

Bah, hopefully I can just find a cheap enough butcher. I mean, it would have to change you over hte months, killing & slicing something you used to breed for love?

I remember when one of my indoor/nonbreeder rabbits broke his leg, I was heartbroken, took him straight to the vets the next morning, only to find it wasn't a break they could fix, he had completely destroyed his leg, and that he would be dragging it for the rest of his life and probably be in a lot of pain, had no choice but to put him down.

Yeah, so as I said, I don't know whether I could actually go through with it, but at least I am finding some things out, and also the information is starting to be collected for anyone else who may be interested in doing it.

Mammals don't suffer when gassed. However, they can become stressed out when put into the gassing chamber and whatnot. A pellet gun or other dislocation methods are much faster and don't tend to cause much stress.